Painting digitally is significantly different from painting with brushes. This kick-off lesson in digital painting provides you with a broad overview of those differences, suggestions for the software and hardware you'll need in your digital painting toolbox, and some tips for getting around with your tools of choice.

The heavy lifting of digital painting happens with Photoshop's brush and eraser tools. This lesson familiarizes you with each—including how the brush tool alone encapsulates other traditional painter tools like airbrushes, pencils, pens, and more—then teaches you a few tricks for using them better.

As one color approaches another there's always a blended transition. Even if your subject is painted a single color it will have lighter and darker areas. Digital or not, painting involves a lot of mixing to find the right shades and blends of colors. This lesson details how to mix paint on your screen like a pro.

Layers are one of the features that most dramatically separate traditional from digital painting. Knowing how to use layers to your advantage can give you great freedom as a digital painter. In this lesson I'll introduce the fundamentals of the layer palette, as well as my thoughts on layer economy.